Zombies Vs Humans

Zombies are the new Vampires! They're not cool like werewolves. There's no Warren Zevon song about them. They're not classy like Dracula and Frankenstein, who can trace their lineage back to respectable 19th century novels. All zombies have is a bunch of George Romero movies. But the lowly zombies are making their move. Creeping into every aspect of our zeitgeist: from movie to books, they are everywhere these days.

A few examples.World War Z: an Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. Max Brooks is the guy for all things zombie, and this book follows his previous best seller “The Zombie Survival Guide”. World War Z is a post-apocalyptic novel written as a collection of personal accounts in the form of anecdotes. Unlike his previous book, this is a serious novel, and not for the faint of heart. It tells the story of a world war from its beginnings in the remote village of New Dachang, China, his characters chronicle the spread of a strange disease that turns humans into zombies. The only way to stop one is to destroy its brain. The disease, and the threat to humanity, expands exponentially and no place on earth is safe. The personal accounts also describe the changing religious, geo-political, and environmental aftermath of the Zombie War. It is a creepy: really creepy, can’t stop reading creepy!Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. What’s to say? This series, there are three in total, is a parody of the original. I chuckled, purists will not. It is an expansion of the beloved Austen novels with the addition of bone crunching zombie mayhem. Grahame-Smith lets Jane Austen do the heavy lifting (85% of the writing in fact) and the plot is obviously in place. He does however overlay a very giggle worthy story. The series includes Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Dreadfully Ever After and Dawn of the Dreadfulls. Victorian Manners, Grindhouse gore and gallows humour. What’s not to love? Damn him for thinking of this before me. Sad Monsters; Growling on the Outside , Crying on the Inside by Frank Lesser. This is a very charming and funny book from Frank Lesser, an Emmy-award winning writer for the Colbert Report, and it consists of vignettes about monsters and their very human problems. Monsters have it tough. Each short essay in this book looks at a different aspect of a monsters life. Everything from High School and Dating to Child Rearing, Death, and Diet. It’s all covered. They suffer from very real problems and are deeply misunderstood. Godzilla suffers through an existential crisis. Creatures from the Black lagoon face discrimination from the creatures from the White lagoon. Mummies have body image issues. Sad Monsters documents the trials and tribulations of them all. From chupacabras to sphinxes, vampires to werewolves and even claw-footed bathtubs (I always knew those were evil). Most of these essays are laugh-out-loud funny, and some just make you smile. If you want a chuckle while reading in bed, or just wish to show solidarity with the creature living beneath it, Sad Monsters is an all-encompassing, diverse collection that lays bares the tortured soul (or lack thereof) of all non-humans. These books are readily available at all bookstores, include your University of Lethbridge Bookstore. Happy Hunting!